Lyra's Reviews > The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois

The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois is sublime and seductive, full of midnight magic and spun-glass secrets. I never wanted to wake up from this luminous fever dream of a novel.

I was fortunate enough to read an early copy and I intend to scream about it until it releases in August.

This novel, Graudin's adult debut, is like a secret wish tossed into a fountain or a hidden door to another world or a dream on the edge of waking. In a Paris just a little more magical than our own, Céleste and her trio of petty thieves and con artists (known amongst themselves as the Enchantresses) fleece unwitting marks before returning to their hideout in Père Lachaise cemetery with pocketfuls of francs. But Céleste has two haunting secrets: she's begun coughing blood in her handkerchief, and she's afraid she'll die before she paints anything of true value or beauty. But when she attends a staging of The Rite of Spring, she meets Rafe, a fellow thief and artist, who offers her a chance she can't refuse. The chance to encounter true magic...and the chance to extend her swiftly dwindling life. Even if it means making a deal with a shadowy Sanct whose very name has been scorched from the face of the earth.

I cannot gush about this novel enough. It's about magic and dreams and mortality and creativity and art and growing up and staying young and being strong and loss and love and finding wonder in the everyday. I highlighted whole pages in my kindle. Every voice is distinct, every description so rich and lyrical, the overarching plot and romances swoonworthy. Intoxicating as absinthe: sweet as sugared secrets but bitter with the knowledge that when the final page closes...you'll have to wake up.